Watchmen trailer

Seemingly lost in the Joker-worship and box-office-gross-hype for The Dark Knight is the trailer for Watchmen that preceded it. Like many (most?) other comic-book geeks, I loved the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons Watchmen graphic novel. The choice of Zack Snyder as director for the Watchmen motion picture is potentially problematic given some of the issues with Frank Miller's 300, but I was nonetheless excited by the costume designs released a few months ago. The Watchmentrailer (released last week) looks quite spectacular, and gives me hope for a good film:

Entertainment Weekly's "Exclusive First Look" cover story displays an array of adjectival effusions about the book

• "the smartest, most subversive superhero story ever created"
• "Watchmen is many things -- a jittery expression of Cold War anxiety, a chilling meditation on human nature, an intricate murder mystery"
• "a piercing deconstruction of superhero mythology told with a sophistication unprecedented for the genre"

but more interesting is the link from the EW website to iTunes, where you can download the complete first issue of Watchmen done in "motion comics" style. Jamie Trecker at Newsarama eviscerates the animated-comics attempt, calling it "simultaneously beguiling and repellent...it's as mesmerizing as a car crash." I wouldn't quite equate it with a disaster, but it's an artistic failure even if it fulfills its purpose as a marketing tool.

(One aspect left unmentioned is the implication of the episode's 25-minute running time. The pacing was pretty much spot-on, which when applied to the 12-issue series would yield a five-hour film. One wonders what Snyder will cut from the novel--and restore for the Director's Cut DVD?--in order to keep the film's running time under 3 hours.)